Pedra de Raio Institute: Citizens’ Justice, Bahia State

The Institute’s mission is to intervene in society by high-quality knowledge-sharing, empowerment, and protagonism by vulnerable groups.

The aim of this social organization is to develop activities, projects, and research in the areas of human rights, environment, racial relations, consumer defense, grassroots mediation, and collective legal aid.

Consisting of professionals from different fields whose common characteristic is the will to contribute to social change through class action, the Institute has established various partnerships. Some of the most important are:

– an agreement with the Office of the Bahia State Public Prosecutor to take reciprocal action in cases of racism and use mediation as a tool, as well as studies and research on the formation of the Brazilian state;

– a partnership with a radio station (Radio Sociedade) to serve low-income neighborhoods with community-based legal aid, through the “Radio Sociedade in the Neighborhoods” project; and

– activities in the sphere of conflict mediation to reduce violence, together with the “Luis Alberto Warat” Research Center.

The Project

With the project Mediation of Racial Conflicts, the Institute intends to expand the collective legal aid services in cases of discrimination and human rights violations.

The legal aid is provided based on spontaneous demands and referrals from the Office of the Bahia State Public Prosecutor, through the Division to Combat Racial Discrimination.

The idea is disseminate the pedagogy of social conflict mediation involving cases of discrimination on grounds of race, gender, class, sexual orientation, religious belief, etc., aimed at the on-going practice of mediation to reduce violence and promote life with dignity.

The proposal for mediation extends beyond the borders of legal formality to encompass autonomy and negotiated exercise of multicultural citizenship and redirecting conflictive relations to a space allowing the establishment of a new subjectivity.

The foundations for mediation are inspired by the model of emancipatory justice, where aggressors and victims are motivated to find a solution that can emerge from the conflict.